I Learned About the Man I Wanted to Become by Chewing Tobacco for the First Time

I've been witnessing an unexpected sight lately on the train I take between the leafy Connecticut banlieue where I live with my wife and three kids and Manhattan—an outbreak of spitting. Yes, you heard me right. A growing number of otherwise respectable-looking, twenty-first-century male overachievers wearing well-cut suits and good watches (the Milgauss, mostly) are, in the words of Charlie Daniels, taking "a little pinch between cheek and gum."

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I stared slack-jawed the first time I beheld what is the telltale giveaway of a smokeless tobacco addict: the improvised, portable spittoon. These come in a variety of styles—paper coffee cup, beer bottle, soda can, though my favorite for its macho disregard of other people's comfort is the clear-plastic water bottle. Thanks for the aquarium view.

Tobacco, as man-of-Manhattan A.J. Jacobs gamely discovered, is a drug of wide possibility, a window unto the agrarian soul to some; an emetic to others; and to the great herds humping the digital-age's daily grind—traders staring at quad monitors all day, for instance—an oral pick-me-up that guarantees laser focus. In this age of gender evolution, it is also—along with luxury pickup trucks, Vinyl, Viagra, hem-rolled jeans, Movember, and Russell Crowe—a strong taste of something then that to many seems necessarily now. As for testing a man's mettle, it remains a peculiarly American rite of passage.

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Finding myself sardined among a contingent of well-bred East Coast elites having a morning hog on the 7:13 was not something I foresaw growing up in Texas. I assumed, for some reason, that putting shredded pieces of the tobacco leaf in your mouth was particular to people who wore cowboy hats and played the fiddle—or at least listened to that kind of music. I had, of course, witnessed the ritual firsthand. My great-uncle Bill, a rancher, went through a sack of Beech-Nut a day, whiling away the hours and the feeling of infinity that land inspires with the steady tick of a nicotine buzz. Then there was my Uncle Larry, a swashbuckling city slicker, who'd pull out a plug of Levi Garrett to line up a putt he'd just made a five-thousand-dollar bet on. In moments like that, country-club flash met country-music outlaw. Whether the ball dropped didn't matter—the guy had style and daring, something I wanted to have myself, along with his backswing. Perhaps that's why, when he offered me a wad one late afternoon, my thirteen-year-old fingers gathered up a leafy grab and clumsily attempted to angle it into the side of my mouth.

My great-uncle Bill, a rancher, went through a sack of Beech-Nut a day, whiling away the hours and the feeling of infinity that land inspires with the steady tick of a nicotine buzz.

We weren't on the golf course; we were at the family ranch hunting deer. It was late afternoon, and we were sitting in a blind, scanning an opening in the woods for a pair of antlers. "Whatever you do," my uncle whispered, "just don't swallow it."

I don't know why but when you have a bunch of tobacco in your mouth, there's something about hearing the word swallow that makes you want to do just that. An itch quickly developed in the back of my throat. I strained against the reflexive urge, watching my uncle expertly toss his wad from side to side, intermittently billowing forth a great black spume.

The taste was revealing itself now—sweet and spicily caustic. It was manageable, even pleasant. An anxious meme ran through my brain flashing the nausea status of my stomach: so far, no barf warning. Chew is what they call it, so chew I did. The juices started to flow. I spit once, then twice. But that itch—it was getting intolerable. Good sense told me to abandon this experiment, but only a few minutes had passed—not enough time to prove to my uncle whatever it was that needed to be proved. Plus, the daring and the style—this is what it took, right? It was time to spit again, but just as I was about to do that, the river reversed course and went down my throat.

As I began to turn slightly green, I wondered, Why, oh, why did I do this? The nicotine took hold, as my uncle fanned me with his hat, and I broke out in a cold sweat. Was I metamorphosing into a man? No, not exactly, but afterward, I knew much more about the one I really wanted to be.

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